Modern people
Most early representatives neoanthropes were named cro-magnons due to the fact that their bone remains (several skeletons) were first found in 1868 in a cave near the village of Cro-Magnon in France. The later neoanthropes are modern people that still exist today.
Generalized name of people modern look, who replaced all their predecessors in the period 40-30 thousand years ago, - neoanthropes .
Scientists believe that neoanthrope, or a person modern type, arose in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Western Asia and in the southeast of Europe. It was here that numerous bone remains of intermediate forms between Neanderthals and early fossil forms were found. Homo sapiens - Cro-Magnons . In those days, all these territories were occupied by dense deciduous forests, rich in a variety of game, various fruits (nuts, berries) and juicy herbs. Under these conditions, it is believed that the last step on the way to Homo sapiens. New person began to actively and widely settle on the planet, making large migrations across all continents of the Earth.
Cro-Magnons are the first people, i.e. direct representativesHomo sapiens. They were characterized by rather high growth (about 180 cm), a skull with a large cranium (up to 1800 cm 3, more often about 1500 cm 3) , the presence of a pronounced chin, a straight forehead and the absence of brow ridges. The presence of a chin protrusion on the lower jaw indicated that the Cro-Magnons were capable of articulate speech.
Cro-Magnons lived in communities of 15-30 people. Caves, tents made of skins, dugouts served as their dwellings. They lived in a tribal society, began to tame animals and engage in agriculture.
The Cro-Magnons had a developed articulate speech, dressed in clothes made of skins, and were engaged in pottery. In Dolni Vestonice in Moravia, the world's oldest pottery kiln was found, which was used by the Cro-Magnons.
The Cro-Magnons had funeral rites. Household items, food, jewelry were placed in the grave. The dead were sprinkled with blood-red ocher, a net was put on their hair, bracelets were put on their hands, flat stones were placed on their faces and buried in a bent position (knees touching the chin).
The appearance of the Cro-Magnon was no different from the appearance modern man.
The Cro-Magnon was characterized by a significant development of the parts of the brain associated with labor activity, speech and responsible for behavior in conditions public life. Along with stone tools, he widely used bone and horn, from which he made needles, drills, arrowheads and harpoons. The objects of hunting were horses, mammoths, rhinos, deer, bison, arctic foxes and many other animals. Cro-Magnon was also engaged in fishing and gathering fruits, roots and herbs. He had a fairly high culture, as evidenced not only by tools and household items (he knew how to make leather, sew clothes and build housing from the skins of animals), but also various drawings on rocks, cave walls, stone and bone sculptures, made with great skill.
Wall painting in a Cro-Magnon cave (left) and his tools:
1 - horn harpoon; 2 - bone needle; 3 - flint scraper; 4-5 - horn and flint dart tips
By the time of the appearance Homo sapiens representatives of the genus Homo were already characteristic of almost all morphological features, characteristic for Homo sapiens: upright posture; development of hands as organs of labor activity; proportionate, more a slim body; lack of hairline. Height increased, the front part of the skull decreased, and the brain part became very large. There was not only a powerful increase in the mass of the brain, but also its qualitative change: great development received the frontal lobes of the brain and areas associated with speech, social behavior and complex activities.
All these transformations were not purely biological aromorphoses, as in other animals. They are largely due to the creation of a special, cultural environment and the strongest action social factors. Among them are the development of a social way of life and the application of the accumulated life experience of ancestors; labor activity and the creation of the hand as an organ of labor; the emergence of speech and the use of the word as a means of communication and education of a person; development of mental abilities that stimulate the improvement of labor and speech; the use of fire, which helped to scare away animals, protect themselves from the cold, cook food, and also spread around the globe. Social labor and the manufacture of labor tools provided a special, human path for the development of the species, distinguished by social (social) relations, the division of labor, the emergence on this basis of trade, art, religion, science and industrial production.
The emergence of man is the largest aromorphosis in the evolution of the organic world, unparalleled in quality in the entire history of the Earth. It was characterized by special patterns and specific features that are unique to anthropogenesis.
Having mastered the culture of making perfect tools, the reproduction of food, the arrangement of dwellings, the creation of clothing, Homo sapiens, unlike all other types of organisms, has become special, biosocial being , secured itself from adverse natural conditions by creating a special - cultural environment. As a result, there was no need for further evolution of man in the direction of transforming him into another, more perfect view. Thus stopped the evolution of modern man as species. It continues only within the already formed species (mainly along the path of polymorphism of morphophysiological characters in different groups ah and human populations).
The emergence of the neoanthrope did not occur through a simple accumulation of new properties in the body, but in close unity with the process of formation of all mankind, and social existence(joint life, communication, speech, work, collective activity) was one of the essential properties of anthropogenesis. Under these conditions, a qualitatively new creature with biosocial properties appeared on Earth, which creatively transforms the world with the help of its mental and cultural abilities and social production. Outside of society, formation is unthinkable Homo sapiens as a special kind. The specific stability of the neoanthrope is precisely due to the "transformation" of a person into a representative of humanity.
The appearance of man is an outstanding event in the development of wildlife. With the emergence of human society at the stage Homo sapiens about 40 thousand years ago creative role natural selection has lost its meaning
>>History: Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. Appearance human races
Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons. The emergence of human races.
4. The emergence of "reasonable man"
1. Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons.
Appeared about 200-150 thousand years ago new type ancient human. Scientists called him "reasonable man" (on Latin"homo sapiens"). This type includes Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon.
The Neanderthal man was named after the place where his remains were first found in the Neanderthal Valley in Germany. He had strongly developed brow ridges, powerful protruding jaws with large teeth.
The Neanderthal could not speak clearly, because his vocal apparatus was underdeveloped. Neanderthals made stone tools and built primitive houses. They hunted large animals. Their clothes were animal skins. Neanderthals buried their dead in specially dug graves. For the first time, they had ideas about death as a transition to the afterlife.
For a long time it was believed that Neanderthals preceded the appearance of modern humans. IN last years scientists have found that Neanderthals lived for some time simultaneously with another type " reasonable man"- a Cro-Magnon, whose remains were first found in the Cro-Magnon cave in France. The appearance and brain of the Cro-Magnons was like modern people. The Cro-Magnons are our direct ancestors. Scientists they call Cro-Magnons, like modern people, "homo sapiens, sapiens", that is, "reasonable man, reasonable." This emphasizes that man is the owner of the most developed mind on our planet. Cro-Magnons appeared about 40 thousand years ago.
2. Mammoth hunters.
Approximately 100 thousand years ago, the Earth became colder and the last glacial period. Very cold periods of time alternated with periods of warming. The northern part of Europe, Asia, America was covered with a powerful glacier.
During the glaciation in Europe, only for a short summer period, the earth thawed, and vegetation appeared on it. However, it was enough to feed large herbivores - mammoths, woolly rhinos, bison, reindeer. The hunting of these animals provided enough meat, fat and bones to feed people and even to heat and light their dwellings.
Hunting at that time became the most important occupation of the Cro-Magnons. They began to make tools not only from stone, but also from mammoth tusks and deer antlers. Tips made of deer antler with teeth bent at the base were attached to the spears. Such a spear was deeply stuck in the body of a wounded beast. Darts (short spears) pierced small animals. Fish were caught using wicker traps and harpoons with sharp tips.
People learned to sew clothes from fur. They invented bone needles, with which they sewed the skins of foxes, arctic foxes, wolves and smaller animals.
The inhabitants of the East European plains built houses from mammoth bones. The foundation of such a house was made of the skulls of huge animals.
3. Tribal communities.
It was impossible to hunt mammoth and other large animals, build houses from their bones alone. Dozens of people were required, organized and observing a certain discipline. People began to live in tribal communities. This community included several large families, forming a genus. Close and distant relatives formed a single team. The tribal community had common dwellings, tools, and food supplies. The men hunted together. Together they were engaged in the manufacture of tools and construction. special respect big family used by the mother. Initially, kinship was conducted through the maternal line. Skillfully made female figurines are often found in the habitats of ancient people. Women were engaged in gathering, preparing food and storing food stocks, maintaining a fire in the hearth, sewing clothes and, most importantly, raising children.
The tribal community, the clan considered themselves descended from one ancestor - a person, an animal or even a plant. The first ancestor of the clan was called a totem. The genus bore the name of its totem. There could be a kind of wolf, a kind of eagle, a kind of bear.
The communities were ruled by the wisest members of the clan - the elders. They had great life experience, kept ancient traditions and customs. The elders ensured that all members of the clan followed the established rules of conduct, so that no one claimed the share of another in the distribution of food, clothing and space in the dwelling.
children in tribal community brought up together. Children knew the customs of the family and followed them. When the boys grew up, they had to pass tests in order to be accepted as adult male hunters. The boy had to remain silent under the hail of blows. They made incisions on his body, rubbed the ashes into them, colored earth and plant juices. The boy had to spend several days and nights alone in the thicket of the forest. Much had to be endured in order to become a real man of the family.
4. The emergence of human races.
With the advent of the Cro-Magnon man, human race: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid. Representatives of different races differ in skin color, eye shape, hair color and type, skull length and shape, body proportions.
The Caucasoid (Eurasian) race is characterized by bright skin, wide slit eyes, soft hair on the head, narrow and sharply protruding nose. Men grow beards and mustaches. In the Mongoloid (Asian-American) race, yellowish or reddish skin, straight black hair, the absence of facial hair in men, a narrow slit of the eyes, and high cheekbones are special features. The Negroid race is distinguished by dark skin, curly coarse hair, a wide nose, and thick lips.
External differences are of secondary importance. All races have equal opportunities for development.
Even before the first civilizations, peoples caucasian race divided into large groups: Semites and Indo-Europeans. The Semites got their name from the name of the biblical Shem (Sema), the son of Patriarch Noah. They populated the Middle East North Africa. Modern Semitic peoples include Arabs and Jews. The Indo-Europeans (they are also called Aryans) settled over a vast territory, occupying Europe, Northern and part of Central India, Iran, Central Asia, peninsula Asia Minor. TO Indo-European peoples Indians, Iranians, Hittites, Celts, Greeks, Romans, as well as Slavs and Germans belonged. The languages they spoke are called Indo-European.
IN AND. Ukolova, L.P. Marinovich, History, Grade 5
Submitted by readers from Internet sites
The emergence of people of the modern physical type, who replaced the ancient people, occurred relatively recently, about 40 thousand years ago. The remains of fossil people of the modern physical type have been found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. In the grotto of Cro-Magnon in France, several of their skeletons were found at once. According to the place of discovery, fossil people of the modern type were called Cro-Magnons. In our country, unique finds of these people were made near Voronezh and Vladimir.
The Cro-Magnons had a high forehead, there was no massive supraorbital ridge. The lower jaw had the same chin protrusion as ours. This feature is associated with the development of the speech apparatus. The volume of the brain basically did not exceed the volume of the Neanderthal brain, but its structure was more perfect, the frontal lobes were more developed. The bones of the skeleton are less massive and thinner than those of the Neanderthal. They have fully formed a straight gait and a modern human hand. In general, in their physical structure, they did not differ from modern people.
For tens of thousands of years of later human history, up to the present time, the physical structure of man has not undergone noticeable changes. New work skills, a new culture were developed, but the structure of human bones, muscles, their interconnectedness remained almost unchanged.
1. General information
3. Reconstructions and drawings
4. Culture
5. Relationship with the Neanderthal
6. The settlement of Europe
8. Notes
9. Literature
1. General information
Cro-Magnons, early representatives of modern man in Europe and partly beyond its borders, who lived 40-10 thousand years ago (Upper Paleolithic period). By appearance and physical development practically did not differ from modern man. The name comes from the grotto of Cro-Magnon in France, where in 1868 several human skeletons were discovered along with Late Paleolithic tools.
Cro-Magnons began to be distinguished by a large active brain, thanks to it and practical technologies, in a relatively short period of time, they made an unprecedented step forward. This manifested itself in aesthetics, the development of communication and symbol systems, tool-making technology and active adaptation to external conditions, as well as in new forms of social organization and more complex social interactions.
The most important fossil finds: in Africa - Cape Flats, Fish Hook, Nazlet Hater; in Europe - Comb Chapel, Mladech, Cro-Magnon, in Russia - Sungir, in Ukraine - Mezhirech.
1.1 The time and place of the appearance of Homo sapiens have been revised
An international team of paleontologists has revised the time and place of the origin of Homo sapiens. The corresponding study was published in the journal Nature, briefly reported by Science News.Experts have discovered on the territory of modern Morocco the remains of the oldest known representative of Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens lived in northwestern Africa 300,000 years ago.
In total, the authors examined 22 fragments of the skulls, jaws, teeth, legs and arms of five people, including at least one child. From modern representatives of Homo sapiens, the remains found in Morocco are distinguished by an elongated back of the skull and large teeth, which makes them look like Neanderthals.
Previously, samples found on the territory of modern Ethiopia, whose age was estimated at 200 thousand years, were considered the oldest remains of Homo sapiens.
Experts agree that the find will advance the understanding of how and when Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons appeared.
2. Features of the physique of Cro-Magnons
2.1 Comparison with Neanderthal man
The physique of the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon
The physique of the Cro-Magnons was less massive than that of the Neanderthals. They were tall (height up to 180-190 cm) and had elongated "tropical" (that is, characteristic of modern tropical human populations) body proportions.
Their skull, compared with the skull of the Neanderthals, had a higher and rounded vault, a straight and smoother forehead, and a protruding chin (Neanderthal people had a sloping chin). People of the Cro-Magnon type were distinguished by a low, wide face, angular eye sockets, a narrow, strongly protruding nose, and a large brain (1400-1900 cm3, i.e., more than that of the average modern European).
2.2 Comparison with modern man
From an evolutionary point of view, in terms of morphological structure and complexity of behavior, these people differ little from us, although anthropologists still note a number of differences in terms of the massiveness of the bones of the skeleton and skull, the shape of individual bones of the skeleton, etc.
Cro-Magnon skull
3. Reconstructions and drawings
Cro-Magnon reconstruction
4. Culture
They lived in communities of up to 100 people and created settlements for the first time in history. The Cro-Magnons, like the Neanderthals, had caves, tents made of skins, and dugouts are still found in Eastern Europe. Possessed articulate speech, built dwellings, dressed in clothes made of skins,
The Cro-Magnons also significantly improved hunting methods (driven hunting), catching reindeer and red deer, mammoths, woolly rhinos, cave bears, wolves and other animals. They made spear throwers (a spear could fly 137 m), as well as devices for catching fish (harpoons, hooks), and bird snares.
The Cro-Magnons were the creators of remarkable European primitive art, as evidenced by the multi-color painting on the walls and ceilings of caves (Shovet, Altamira, Lascaux, Montespan, etc.), engravings on pieces of stone or bone, ornament, small stone and clay sculpture. Magnificent images of horses, deer, bison, mammoths, female figurines, called “Venuses” by archaeologists for the splendor of their forms, various objects carved from bone, horns and tusks or molded from clay, undoubtedly testify to the highly developed sense of beauty among Cro-Magnons.
The Cro-Magnons had funeral rites. Household items, food, jewelry were placed in the grave. The dead were sprinkled with blood-red ocher, a net was put on their hair, bracelets were put on their hands, flat stones were placed on their faces and buried in a bent position (knees touching the chin).
5. Relationship with the Neanderthal
Modern results of genetics and statistics leave scientists with no choice but to admit. At the same time, there was no crossing of Neanderthals with the ancient African population.
Scientists are considering possible scenarios for Neanderthal encounters with sapiens, as a result of which the genome of the Eurasian population was enriched.
6. The settlement of Europe
Markov. Origin and evolution of man. Paleoanthropology, genetics, evolutionary psychology.
Approximately 45 thousand years ago, the first representatives of the Cro-Magnons appeared in Europe, the patrimony of the Neanderthals. And the 6,000 years of coexistence in Europe of the two species was a period of intense competition for food and other resources.
Archaeological confirmation of the hypothesis that there were direct clashes between sapiens appeared. In the cave of Les Rois (Les Rois) in southwestern France, among many typical Cro-Magnon (Aurignacian) artifacts, the lower jaw of a Neanderthal child was found with scratches from stone tools. The sapiens probably simply ate the young Neanderthal using stone tools to scrape meat from the bones (see: F. V. Ramirez Rozzi et al. Cutmarked human remains bearing Neandertal features and modern human remains associated with the Aurignacian at Les Rois, PDF, 1, 27 Mb // Journal of Anthropological Sciences 2009. V. 87. P. 153–185).
National Center staff scientific research in Paris, under the leadership of Fernando Rozzi, after analyzing the finds at the Cro-Magnon sites, they found gnawed Neanderthal bones with teeth marks, characteristic scratches and fractures on the bones. There is also evidence that Homo sapiens made necklaces from the teeth of Neanderthals. And in the burial complex of the Cro-Magnon Sungir (200 km from Moscow), a Neanderthal tibia with cut off joints was found, the cavity of which contained ocher powder; thus the bone was used as a casket.
In Spain, the situation with the “Ebro border” is known: at almost the same time, Cro-Magnons lived on the northern bank of the Ebro River, and Neanderthals lived in very poor conditions on the southern bank (there were dry, arid steppes).
The modern vision of the problem of the disappearance of Neanderthals in Europe looks like this: where they could have been preserved for a long time - until the end of the Ice Age.
7. The emergence and development of speech. Linguistics
Chernigovskaya Tatyana Vladimirovna; doctor of biological and philological sciences, professor at St. Petersburg State University: “In modern science, which deals with language issues, there are.
The first is that human language- the heir to the intellectual potential of previous species. Psychologists, in a broad sense, take this position.
Second.“Linguists of a certain direction, namely, those who come from N. Chomsky, generativists, and those who adjoin them, they assert a completely different thing, they say that language is a separate module in the brain, that it is a completely separate ability , not part of general cognitive capabilities. A person became a person when a certain mutation occurred, which led to the formation in the brain, as they say, of the Language Acquisition Device, Speech Organ. That is, a language organ that only knows how to do what to develop some algorithms, that is, write itself, let's say, a virtual, or something, textbook given language into which the person was born. But if, they argue, the brain did not have such a special “device”, as it were, that can perform such procedures, then a person simply could not master such a complex system, which is language. Naturally, a significant part of the linguists of this direction are passionate about the search for a proto-language.
More:
The latest research is the necessary links that made it possible, using a systematic multidisciplinary approach, to specifically study and investigate the processes of the emergence and development of human speech, namely the processes of formation.
Interaction and some confrontation between Cro-Magnons and Neanderthals contributed to the development of speech-relationship.
Thus, martial arts and technologies led to the expansion of contacts, both between collectives and within collectives. It is here that the factors that contributed to the development of speech in humans are widely manifested.
Objectively.
Intelligence, contacts with foreigners, preparation, discussion and implementation of military actions contributed to the maximum to the emergence and development of speech, and these actions become fully possible only by distracting from the current situation. Thus, an essential feature of the formation - for the first time there is a fundamental possibility of implementing military operations.
The main feature of the processing of verbal information corresponding to the fourth level of SMP perception is that the individual's speech begins to develop in the process of verbal communication, abstracted from specific situation. At the same time, speech takes special meaning- receiving and exchanging new information. As a result of the exchange of new information, speech reflects not only what the individual already knows from his own experience, but also reveals what he does not yet know, which introduces him to wide circle facts and events new to him. Now, for an individual, new sets of subsystems of neurons make it possible to implement an increasingly objective assessment of the environment and the results of his activity based on the RSN information system and SFM subsystems. These systems represent specifically human formations that are.
The fourth level of SMP already opens up the possibility to fully realize the confrontation (opposition) between sapiens and Neanderthals.
The appearance of remarkable multi-coloured paintings on the walls and ceilings of the caves testifies to individual and societal values. This gives rise to the possibility of identifying the date corresponding to the formation of the next fifth level of perception (SL) - SPM subsystems.
Considering we can assert that the speech of the primitive artists who painted the cave
(today it is the earliest painting on Earth - about 36 thousand years old), corresponds to the stage of development of a child's speech, which begins at 3.5 years and lasts up to 4.5 years.
The appearance of the bow as a hand weapon for throwing arrows makes it possible to identify later dates associated with the processing of linguistic information corresponding to the subsequent stage of development of the child's speech from 4.5 years to 6-7 years.
In conclusion, it is necessary to cite the quotation with which I ended my report "Biological prerequisites for human speech" Zorina Z. A., Ph.D. n., prof., head. laboratory of Moscow State University. This report was presented at a seminar on topical issues of neuroscience, neuroinformatics and cognitive research:
"There is no gap between verbal and other human behavior or the behavior of other animals
- there is no barrier to be destroyed, no abyss to be bridged, only unknown territory to be explored." R. Gardner et al., 1989, p. XVII.at this stage, a specific human mind and speech begin to develop .
9. Literature
Koshelev, Chernigovskaya 2008 – Koshelev A.D., Chernigovskaya T.V. (ed.) Reasonable behavior and language. Issue. 1. Communication systems of animals and human language. The problem of the origin of language. M.: Languages of Slavic cultures, 2008.
Zorina Z. A., “Biological prerequisites for human speech” - Regular seminars on topical issues of neurobiology, neuroinformatics and cognitive research, 2012, Neuroscience.ru - Modern neurosciences.
Markov 2009 - Markov A.V. Origin and evolution of man Review of the achievements of paleoanthropology, comparative genetics and evolutionary psychology Report read at the Institute of Developmental Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences on March 19, 2009
Markov A. V. “The Birth of Complexity. Evolutionary biology today. Unexpected discoveries and new questions. Moscow: Corpus, Astrel, 2010.
Markov A. V. “Human evolution. 1. Monkeys, bones and genes.", Dynasty, 2011
Markov A. V. “Human evolution. 2. Monkeys, neurons and soul.", Dynasty, 2011
Chernigovskaya 2008 – Chernigovskaya T. V. From communication signals to human language and thinking: evolution or revolution? // Russian Physiological Journal. I.M. Sechenova, 2008, 94, 9, 1017-1028.
Chernigovskaya 2009 – Chernigovskaya T.V. Brain and language: innate modules or a learning network? // Brain. Fundamental and applied problems. According to the materials of the session General Assembly Russian Academy Sciences December 15–16, 2009. Ed. ak. A.I. Grigoriev. M.: Science. 2009.
Chomsky et al. 2002 - Hauser, M. D., Chomsky, N., & Fitch, W. T. (2002). The faculty of language: What is it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science, 298, 1569-1579.
Non-fiction books
Eduard Storkh - Mammoth Hunters. Book with links to real archaeological sources
B. Bayer, W. Birstein et al. History of Humanity 2002 ISBN 5-17-012785-5
* Documentary film about Chauvet Cave: "The Cave of Forgotten Dreams" 2012. *
Publication date: 9.09. 2016 02:30
PS
Just a joke
The son of a learned linguist, looking up from a textbook where it is stated: they say that language is a separate module in the brain - a virtual, or something, a textbook of this language into which this person is born, ”asks his father:
- My younger brother babbles and babbles, but nothing is clear. Was he not born Russian?
Introduction 3
1. Characteristics of the settlement of Cro-Magnons 4
2. Cro-Magnon lifestyle 9
Conclusion 28
References 29
Introduction
The origin of man and subsequent racial genesis are rather mysterious. Nevertheless scientific discoveries the past two centuries helped to lift the veil over the mystery somewhat. It is now firmly established that in the conditionally called "prehistoric" era, two types of people lived in parallel on earth - homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthal man) and homo cromagnonis, which is also commonly called homo sapiens-sapiens (Cro-Magnon man or reasonable man). Neanderthal man was first discovered in 1857 in the Neander Valley near Düsseldorf. Cro-Magnon man - in 1868 in the Cro-Magnon grotto in the French province of Dordogne. Since the first discoveries of the two types of ancient people mentioned, numerous more finds of them have been made, which have provided new material for scientific developments.
Preliminary conclusions from scientific discoveries. Judging by basic anthropometric characteristics and genetic analysis, Cro-Magnon man is almost identical to the modern species Homo sapiens-sapiens and is believed to be the immediate ancestor of the Caucasoid race.
This work aims to give a general description of the way of life of the Cro-Magnons.
For this, the following tasks are set:
Describe the settlement of Cro-Magnons.
Consider the lifestyle of the Cro-Magnons.
The work consists of an introduction, two chapters, a conclusion and a list of references.
Characteristics of the settlement of Cro-Magnons
By 30 thousand BC. e. Cro-Magnon groups have already begun moving east and north in search of new hunting grounds. By 20 thousand BC. e. migration to Europe and Asia has reached such proportions that in the newly developed areas, the number of game began to gradually decline.
People were desperately looking for new food sources. Under the pressure of circumstances, our distant ancestors could well become omnivorous again, eating both plant and animal food. It is known that it was then that for the first time people turned to the sea in search of food.
The Cro-Magnons became more inventive and creative, creating more elaborate dwellings and clothing. Innovations allowed groups of Cro-Magnons to hunt new types of game in the northern regions. By 10 thousand BC. e. Cro-Magnons spread to all continents, with the exception of Antarctica. Australia was inhabited 40 - 30 thousand years ago. After 5-15 thousand years, groups of hunters crossed the Bering Strait, getting from Asia to America. These later and more complex communities preyed primarily on large animals. Cro-Magnon hunting methods gradually improved, as evidenced by the large number of animal bones discovered by archaeologists. In particular, in Solutre, a place in France, the remains of more than 10,000 horses were found. In Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic, archaeologists have unearthed a large number of mammoth bones. According to a number of archaeologists, since the migration of people to America, which occurred about 15 thousand years ago, in less than one millennium, it was destroyed most of fauna of North and South America. The ease with which the Aztec civilization was defeated by the Spanish conquistadors is explained by the horror that gripped the foot Aztec soldiers at the sight of mounted warriors. The Aztecs had never seen horses before: even during the early migrations from northern to central America, their ancestors exterminated all the wild horses that lived on the American prairies in search of food. They did not even imagine that these animals can be used not only as a source of food.
The resettlement of Cro-Magnons around the globe was called "the period of unconditional success of mankind." The impact of a carnivorous lifestyle on human development has been very significant. The migration of the most ancient peoples to areas with a more temperate climate stimulated genetic changes. The settlers had lighter skin, less massive bone structure, and straighter hair. The skeleton, especially among the Caucasian peoples, was formed slowly, and their light skin was more resistant to frost than dark. Lighter skin was also better at absorbing vitamin D, which is vital when sunlight is deficient (in areas where days are shorter and nights are longer).
By the time when the man of the modern type was finally formed, the vast geographical expanses of the Earth had already been mastered. They were also inhabited by archanthropes and paleoanthropes, so that the Cro-Magnon man had only two empty continents to master - America and Australia. True, with regard to Australia, the question remains open. It is possible that it was inhabited by paleoanthropes, who contributed to the formation of the Australian neoanthrope. Most ancient skull in Australia found in the area of the lake. Mungo, 900 km west of Sydney. The antiquity of this skull is 27-35 thousand years. Obviously, the beginning of human settlement in Australia should be attributed to this time. Although the skull from Mungo does not have a supraorbital ridge, it is very archaic - it has a sloping forehead and a sharp inflection of the occiput. It is possible that the Mungo skull represents a local version of a paleoanthrope, and there is no reason to deny its participation in the further development of Homo sapiens on the Australian continent.
As for America, from time to time there is information about the discovery of very ancient skeletons on its territory, but all these finds are morphologically related to Homo sapiens. Thus, scientists argue about the time of the settlement of the American mainland, but they are unanimous that America was settled by a man of the modern type. Most likely, the settlement of the American continent took place approximately 25-20 thousand years ago along the Bering Sea Isthmus, which existed at that time on the site of the current Bering Strait.
The Cro-Magnon lived at the end of the ice age, or rather, at the end of the Wurm glaciation. Warming and cooling succeeded each other quite often (of course, on the scale of geological time), and the glaciers either retreated or advanced. If at that time the surface of the Earth could be observed from a spacecraft, it would resemble the multi-colored surface of a colossal soap bubble. Scroll through this period so that millennia fit into minutes, and silver-white ice fields creep forward like spilled mercury, but they are immediately thrown back by an unfolding carpet of green vegetation. Coastlines will waver like pennants in the wind as the blue of the ocean expands and contracts. Islands will rise from this blue and disappear into it again, like stones over which a stream is crossed, and it will be blocked by natural dams and dams, forming new ways for human resettlement. On one of these ancient routes, the Cro-Magnon traveled from present-day China to the north, to the cold expanses of Siberia. And from there he probably went overland through Beringia to North America. 1
Over many generations, people gradually moved to the northeast of Asia. They could go in two ways - from the depths of the Asian continent, from the territory of present-day Siberia, and along the Pacific coast, skirting the Asian continent from the east. Obviously, there were several waves of "settlers" from Asia to America. The earliest of them moved along the coast, and their origin is associated with the regions of Eastern and southeast Asia. Later Asian migrants moved from the interior of the Asian continent.
In America, people were met by the harsh expanses of Greenland, a sharply continental climate North America, tropical forests of the South American continent and the cold winds of Tierra del Fuego. Settling in new areas, a person adapted to new conditions, and as a result, local anthropological variants were formed. 2
The population density in the Cro-Magnon era was low - only 0.01-0.5 people per 1 sq. km. km, the number of groups was about 25-30 people. The entire population of the Earth at that time is estimated from several tens of thousands to half a million people. The territory of Western Europe was somewhat denser. Here, the population density was about 10 people per 1 km, and the entire population of Europe at the time the Cro-Magnons lived there was about 50 thousand people.
It would seem that the population density was very low, and human populations did not have to compete for food and water sources. However, in those days, man lived by hunting and gathering, and his "vital interests" included vast territories over which herds of ungulates roamed - main object hunting of an ancient man. The need to preserve and increase their hunting grounds forced a person to move further and further, to the still uninhabited areas of the planet.
The more advanced technology of Cro-Magnon man made available to him those sources of food that were unfamiliar to his predecessors. Hunting tools improved, and this expanded the Cro-Magnon's ability to hunt for new types of cottages. With meat food, people received new sources of energy. Feeding on nomadic herbivores, migratory birds, marine pinnipeds and fish, man, along with their meat, gained access to a very wide range of food resources.
Even greater opportunities were opened for Cro-Magnon man by the use of grains of wild-growing cereals for food. In North Africa, in the upper reaches of the Nile, 17 thousand years ago, people lived in whose diet, apparently, cereals played a significant role. Stone sickles and primitive grain graters have been preserved - limestone slabs with a shallow recess in the middle for grain and a recess in the form of a wide trough, along which flour was probably poured. Obviously, these people were already making bread - in the form of simple unleavened cakes baked on hot stones.
Thus, Cro-Magnon man ate much better than his predecessors. This could not but affect the state of his health and overall life expectancy. If for the Neanderthal the average life expectancy was about 25 years, then for the Cro-Magnon man it increased to 30-35 years, remaining at this level until the Middle Ages.
The dominance of the Cro-Magnons was the cause of their own downfall. They fell victim to their own success. Overcrowding soon led to the depletion of hunting areas. Long before this, herds of large animals in densely populated areas were almost completely destroyed. As a result, there was competition for limited food sources. The rivalry in turn led to war, and the war led to subsequent migrations.
Cro-Magnon lifestyle
For modern researchers, the most striking difference between the Cro-Magnon culture is a technological revolution in stone processing. The meaning of this revolution was a much more rational use of stone raw materials. Its economical use was of fundamental importance for ancient man, since it made it possible not to depend on natural sources of flint, carrying with it a small supply. If we compare the total length of the working edge of the product, which a person received from one kilogram of flint, you can see how much longer it is for the Cro-Magnon master compared to the Neanderthal and archanthropus. The oldest man from a kilogram of flint could make only from 10 to 45 cm of the working edge of the tool, the Neanderthal culture made it possible to obtain 220 cm of the working edge from the same amount of flint. As for the Cro-Magnon man, his technology turned out to be many times more effective - he received 25 m of working edge from a kilogram of flint.
The secret of the Cro-Magnon was the emergence of a new method of processing flint - the method of knife-shaped plates. The bottom line was that from the main piece of flint - the core - long and narrow plates were broken off, from which various tools were then made. The cores themselves had a prismatic shape with a flat upper face. The plates were broken off with a precise blow on the edge of the upper face of the core, or were pressed out with the help of bone or horn pushers. The length of the plates was equal to the length of the core - 25-30 cm, and their thickness was several millimeters. 3
The knife-blade method was probably of great help to hunters who went on multi-day expeditions to areas where not only flints, but also other fine-grained rocks were almost absent. They could take with them a supply of cores or plates, so that there would be something to replace the tips of spears that broke off during an unsuccessful throw or remained in the wound of an animal that managed to escape. And the edges of the flint knives, which cut through the joints and tendons, broke off and became dull. Thanks to the knife-blade method, new tools could be made on the spot.
The second important achievement of the Cro-Magnon was the development of new materials - bones and horns. These materials are sometimes referred to as Stone Age plastics. They are durable, ductile and free from such a disadvantage as fragility inherent in wood products. Obviously, the aesthetic appeal of bone products, from which beads, jewelry and figurines were made, also played an important role. In addition, the source of these materials was practically inexhaustible - they were the bones of the same animals that the Cro-Magnon man hunted.
The ratio of stone and bone tools immediately distinguishes the inventory of the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon sites. Among Neanderthals, for every thousand stone tools, there are at best 25 bone products. At Cro-Magnon sites, bone and flint are equally represented, or even bone tools predominate.
With the advent of bone needles, awls and piercings, fundamentally new possibilities appeared in the processing of skins and in the manufacture of clothing. Large animal bones also served as building material for the dwellings of ancient hunters and as fuel for hearths. 4
The Cro-Magnon no longer depended on natural shelters such as caves and rock canopies. He built dwellings where he needed, and this created additional opportunities for long-distance migrations and the development of new lands.
The third achievement of the Cro-Magnons was the invention of fundamentally new hunting tools, unknown to his predecessors. These include, first of all, a bow and a spear thrower. Spear throwers increased the range of the spears of the ancient hunters, almost three times increasing their range and impact power, and played big role in the lives of ancient hunters. They were made, as a rule, from deer antlers, decorated with carved figures and patterns, and were often real works of art.
However, the spear thrower meant hunting in open spaces, where it was easy to frighten off prey and where the hunter himself remained unprotected in front of a wounded beast. The invention of the bow made it possible to hunt from cover, in addition, the arrow flew further and faster than the spear.
No less important for the Cro-Magnon man were the devices for catching fish - spears and fish braces, which is an analogue of a fishing hook. In South Africa, archaeologists have found small cylindrical stones with grooves that could be used as sinkers for fishing nets.
Further progressive development of culture in the Upper Paleolithic was expressed primarily in the improvement of methods for their manufacture. The finish of the guns has become more perfect, as the retouching technique is now improving. By pressing with force the end of an elastic bone stick or a flint wringer on the edge of a stone, a person quickly and deftly chipped (as if he was cutting off) one after another long and narrow flakes of flint. A new plate manufacturing technique is emerging. Previously, the plates were chipped from the disc-shaped core. Such a core was, in fact, a simple rounded pebble, from which flakes were removed, pounding it in a circle from the edges to the center. Now the plates were chipped off from the prismatic core.
Accordingly, the direction of the blows that separated the plates also changed. These blows were no longer applied obliquely, not obliquely, but vertically, from one end of the core to the other. Narrow and long blades of a new type, obtained from prismatic cores, made it possible to drastically change and expand the range of small stone tools that were required in conditions of an incomparably more developed way of life than before: scrapers different kind, points, punctures, various cutting tools. For the first time, flint tools appear, the working edges of which are, in principle, designed in the same way as modern steel cutters. This is usually a massive cutting edge formed by cleavage planes converging at an acute angle. With such a flint chisel, it was easier to cut wood, bone and horn, cut deep grooves in them and make cuts, successively removing one chip after another.
In the Upper Paleolithic, various bone spearheads and throwing weapons, including compound harpoons with teeth, first appear. During excavations at the Meiendorf site, near Hamburg (Germany), harpoons and deer shoulder blades were found, pierced by such harpoons.
The most important event in the development of hunting weapons was the invention of the first mechanical device for throwing darts - a spear thrower (throwing board), which is a rod with a hook at the end. By lengthening the span of the arm, the spear thrower greatly increased thereby the force of impact and the range of the dart.
A variety of stone tools appeared for butchering carcasses and processing the skins of hunted animals, for making wooden and bone products.
In the Upper Paleolithic, the way of life of people became much more complicated, the structure of primitive community. Separate groups of Neanderthals were, in all likelihood, alien and even hostile to each other. Of great importance for the rapprochement of different groups should have been the emergence of exogamy, that is, the prohibition marital relations within the clan and the establishment of a permanent marriage relationship between representatives of different genera. The establishment of exogamy as a social institution, testifying to the increasing development and complication of social relations, can be attributed to the Upper Paleolithic time.
The increase in hunting productivity in the Upper Paleolithic contributed to an even clearer division of labor between men and women. Some were constantly engaged in hunting, while others, with the development of relative settledness (due to the same greater hunting productivity), spent more time at the camps, leading the increasingly complicated group economy. Women in the conditions of more or less sedentary life made clothes, various utensils, collected edible and technical plants, for example, used for weaving, cooked food. It is also extremely important that it was the women who were mistresses in public dwellings, while their husbands were strangers here.
With the dominance of group marriage, characteristic of this stage of the tribal system, when the father is not exactly known, the children, of course, belonged to women, which strengthened social role and influence on the public affairs of the mother woman.
All this served as the basis for a new form of primitive communal relations - the maternal tribal community.
Direct indications of the design of the maternal clan at this time are, on the one hand, communal dwellings, and on the other hand, widespread images of women in which one can see images of female ancestors known from folklore, for example, among the Eskimos and Aleuts.
On the basis of the further complication of the social life of the Cro-Magnons, significant changes are also taking place in all areas of their culture: there is already enough developed art, in labor practice a person accumulates experience and positive knowledge.
Thus, it was necessary to significantly change the general view of the life of the Cro-Magnon inhabitants not only of the Russian Plain, but of all of Europe. The Cro-Magnons used to be seen as wandering miserable savages, constantly moving from place to place, not knowing peace and more or less stable settlement. Now the general way of their life and their social system have been revealed in a new way.
An absolutely exceptional picture of the dwelling of ancient mammoth hunters in terms of expressiveness and scale was revealed, for example, in one of the numerous Kostenki settlements - in Kostenki I. Studying this place, archaeologists found out that bonfires, animal bones and flints processed by human hand filled the base of the ancient dwelling, outside of which finds were found only occasionally.
The ancient dwelling, unearthed in Kostenki I by excavations in 1931-1936, had an oval shape in plan. Its length was 35 m, width - 15-16 m. The living area thus reached a size of almost 600 square meters. m. With such a large size, the dwelling, of course, could not be heated by one hearth. In the center of the living area, along its long axis, symmetrically located hearth pits stretched at intervals of 2 m. There were 9 foci, each about 1 m in diameter. These hearths were topped with a thick layer of bone ash and charred bones used as fuel. Obviously, the inhabitants of the dwelling, before leaving it, launched their hearths and did not clean them for a long time. They also left unused reserves of fuel in the form of mammoth bones located near the hearths.
One of the hearths served not for heating, but for a completely different song. Pieces of brown iron ore and spherosiderite were fired in it, thus extracting mineral paint - bloodstone. This paint was used by the inhabitants of the settlement in such large quantities that the layer of earth that filled the recess of the dwelling was in places completely painted in red of various shades.
Another characteristic feature of the internal structure of the large dwellings in Kostenki I was also found. Large tubular mammoth bones, vertically dug into the ground, were found next to the hearths or somewhat away from them. Judging by the fact that the bones were covered with notches and notches, they served as a kind of "workbench" for the ancient masters.
The main living area was bordered by additional rooms - dugouts, located along its contour in the form of a ring. Two of them stood out among the others for their larger size and were located almost symmetrically on the right and left sides of the main dwelling. On the floor of both dugouts, the remains of fires that warmed these rooms were noticed. The roof of the dugouts had a frame made of large bones and mammoth tusks. The third large dugout was located at the opposite, far end of the living area and, obviously, served as a storage room for parts of the mammoth carcass. 5
A curious household touch here are also special pits - storage for especially valuable things. In such pits, sculptural images of women, animals, including a mammoth, a bear, a cave lion, decorations from molars and fangs of predators, mainly arctic fox, were found. In addition, in a number of cases, selected flint plates were found, lying several pieces together, large arrowheads of excellent quality, apparently deliberately hidden in specially dug recesses. Considering all this and noting that the figurines of women were broken, and mostly insignificant things turned out to be on the floor of the dwelling, one of the researchers of the Kostenkovo sites, P.P. Efimenko, believes that the large dwelling of Kostenki I was abandoned "under emergency circumstances." In his opinion, the residents left their home, capturing all the most valuable things. They left in place only what was hidden in advance, including figurines. The enemies, having discovered the statuettes of women, broke them in order to destroy the tribal "patrons" of the Kostenkovo community and cause even more damage to it.
Excavations in Kostenki thus revealed a picture of the domestic life of an entire community, which included dozens, and maybe hundreds of people who lived in a vast, already well-arranged by that time, complex common dwelling. This complex and at the same time harmonious picture of the ancient settlement clearly shows that in the life of its inhabitants there was a certain internal routine, which was built on the traditions inherited from previous generations, on the rules of behavior of its members strictly defined by necessity and custom. These traditions were based on the experience of collective labor activity, which has been continuously growing over the course of millennia. The whole life of the Paleolithic community was based on the joint work of its members, on their common struggle with nature.
The most they have in their clothing is a more or less wide belt around the hips, or something like a wide triangular tail that falls behind, as can be seen on the famous figurine from Lespug (France). Sometimes it looks like a tattoo. Much attention was paid by women to the hairstyle, sometimes very complex and magnificent. Hair either falls down in a solid mass, or is collected in concentric circles. Sometimes they are arranged in zigzag vertical rows.
Inside their low and cramped semi-underground winter dwelling, the people of Cro-Magnon time, obviously, were naked or half-naked. Only outside the dwelling they appeared in clothes made of skins and a fur hood. In this form, they are presented in the works of Paleolithic sculptors - in fur clothes or naked with only one belt on the body.
Paleolithic figurines are interesting not only because they truly convey the appearance of the Cro-Magnons, but also because they represent the art of the Ice Age.
In labor, a person developed speech and thinking, learned to reproduce the forms of things he needed according to a predetermined plan, which was the main precondition for creative activity in the field of art. In the course of the development of social labor activity, finally, specific needs arose that caused the birth of art as a special sphere of social consciousness and human activity.
In the Upper Paleolithic, as we see, the technique of hunting economy becomes more complicated. House building is born, a new way of life is being formed. In the course of the maturation of the tribal system, the primitive community becomes stronger and more complicated in its structure. Thinking and speech develop. The mental outlook of a person is immeasurably expanded and enriched spiritual world. Along with these general achievements in the development of culture, of great importance for the emergence and further growth of art was the specifically important circumstance that the people of the upper Cro-Magnons now began to widely use the bright colors of natural mineral paints. He also mastered new methods of processing soft stone and bone, which opened up before him previously unknown possibilities for conveying the phenomena of the surrounding reality in a plastic form - in sculpture and carving.
Without these prerequisites, without these technical achievements, born of direct labor practice in the manufacture of tools, neither painting nor the artistic processing of bone, which mainly represents the art of Cro-Magnons known to us, could have arisen.
The most remarkable and most important thing in the history of primitive art lies in the fact that from its first steps it went mainly along the path of truthful transmission of reality. The art of the Upper Cro-Magnons, taken in its best examples, is remarkable for its amazing fidelity to nature and accuracy in the transfer of vital, most significant features. Already in the early days of the Upper Cro-Magnons, in the Aurignacian monuments of Europe, examples of true drawing and sculpture, as well as cave paintings identical with them in spirit, are found. Their appearance, of course, was preceded by a certain preparatory period. 6
The deep archaism of the earliest cave images is reflected in the fact that the appearance of the most ancient of them, early Aurignacian, was caused at first glance by associations that seemed to accidentally flare up in the mind of a primitive person who noticed a similarity in the outlines of stones or rocks with the appearance of certain animals. But already in the Aurignacian time, next to the samples of archaic art, in which the natural resemblance and creativity of man are fancifully combined, such images were also widespread, which entirely owe their appearance to the creative imagination of primitive people.
All these archaic samples of ancient art are characterized by a pronounced simplicity of form and the same dryness of color. Paleolithic man at first limited himself to only coloring his contour drawings with strong and bright tones of mineral paints. It was quite natural in dark caves, dimly lit by barely burning wicks or by the fire of a smoky fire, where the halftones would be simply invisible. Cave drawings of that time are usually figures of animals, made with only one linear contour, outlined with red or yellow stripes, sometimes completely filled inside with round spots or filled with paint.
At the Madeleine stage, new progressive changes take place in the art of the Cro-Magnons, mainly in cave paintings. They are expressed in the transition from the simplest outline and smoothly filled with paint drawings to multi-color paintings, from a line and a smooth monochromatic color field to a spot that conveys the volume and shape of an object with different paint density, a change in tone strength. The simple, albeit colorful drawings of that time are now growing, therefore, into real cave painting with the transfer of the forms of the living body of the depicted animals, characteristic of its best examples, for example, in Altamira.
The vital, realistic nature of Cro-Magnon art is not limited to mastery in the static depiction of the shape of the body of animals. He found his most complete expression in the transmission of their dynamics, in the ability to grasp movements, to convey instantly changing specific poses and positions.
Despite all its truthfulness and vitality, the art of the Cro-Magnons remains fully primitive, truly infantile. It is fundamentally different from the modern one, where the artistic story is strictly limited in space. Cro-Magnon art does not know air and perspective in the true sense of the word; in these drawings, the ground is not visible under the feet of the figures. It also lacks composition in our sense of the word, as a deliberate distribution of individual figures on a plane. The best Cro-Magnon drawings are nothing more than instantaneous and frozen individual impressions with their characteristic amazing liveliness in the transmission of movements.
Even in those cases where large clusters of drawings are observed, no logical sequence, no definite semantic connection is found in them. Such, for example, is the mass of bulls in the painting of Altamira. The accumulation of these bulls is the result of repeated drawing of figures, their simple accumulation over a long time. The random nature of such combinations of figures is emphasized by the heaping of drawings on top of each other. Bulls, mammoths, deer and horses randomly lean on each other. Earlier drawings are overlapped by subsequent ones, barely showing through under them. This is not the result of a single creative effort of the thought of one artist, but the fruits of the uncoordinated spontaneous work of a number of generations, connected only by tradition.
Nevertheless, in some exceptional cases, especially in miniature works, in engravings on bone, and sometimes also in cave paintings, the rudiments of narrative art and, at the same time, a peculiar semantic composition of figures are found. First of all, these are group images of animals, meaning a herd or a herd. The emergence of such group drawings is understandable. An ancient hunter constantly dealt with herds of bulls, herds of wild horses, with groups of mammoths, which were for him the object of a collective hunt - a paddock. That is how, in the form of a herd, they were depicted in a number of cases.
There are in the art of the Cro-Magnons and the beginnings of a perspective image, however, very peculiar and primitive. As a rule, animals are shown from the side, in profile, and people are shown from the front. But there were certain techniques that made it possible to revive the drawing and bring it even closer to reality. So, for example, the bodies of animals are sometimes given in profile, and the head in front, with eyes to the viewer. On the images of a person, on the contrary, the torso was given in front, and the face in profile. There are cases when the animal is depicted from the front, schematically, but in such a way that only the legs and chest, branched deer antlers are visible, and the back is missing, closed by the front half of the body. Together with the plastic images of women, the art of the Upper Cro-Magnons is just as characteristic of sculptural images of animals, equally true to nature, made of mammoth tusk, bone, and even clay mixed with bone ash. These are the figures of a mammoth, bison, horses and other animals, including predators.
The art of the Cro-Magnons grew up on a certain social basis. It served the needs of society, was inextricably linked with a certain level of development of the productive forces and production relations. With a change in this economic basis, society changed, the superstructure changed, including art. Therefore, the art of Cro-Magnons can by no means be identical with realistic art. later eras. It is just as unique in its originality, in its primitive realism, as is the entire Cro-Magnon era that gave birth to it - this true "humanity's childhood". 7
The vitality and truthfulness of the best examples of Cro-Magnon art were primarily due to the peculiarities of working life and the worldview of Paleolithic people that grew out of it. The accuracy and sharpness of the observations reflected in the images of animals were determined by the daily labor experience of ancient hunters, whose whole life and well-being depended on knowledge of the lifestyle and nature of animals, on the ability to track them down and master them. Such knowledge of the animal world was a matter of life and death for primitive hunters, and penetration into the life of animals was such a characteristic and important part of the psychology of people that it colored their entire spiritual culture, starting, judging by the data of ethnography, from the animal epic and fairy tales, where animals perform the only or main characters, ending with rituals and myths in which people and animals represent one inseparable whole.
Cro-Magnon art gave people of that time satisfaction with the correspondence of images to nature, the clarity and symmetrical arrangement of lines, and the strength of the color gamut of these images.
Abundant and carefully executed decorations delighted the human eye. A custom arose to cover the simplest household items with ornaments and often give them sculptural forms. Such, for example, are daggers, the hilt of which is turned into a figurine of a deer or a goat, a spear-winder with the image of a partridge. The aesthetic nature of these adornments cannot be denied even in those cases when such adornments acquired a certain religious meaning and magical character.
The art of the Cro-Magnons was of great positive significance in the history of ancient mankind. Consolidating his work life experience in living images of art, primitive man deepened and expanded his ideas about reality and more deeply, comprehensively cognized it, and at the same time enriched his spiritual world. The emergence of art, which meant a huge step forward in human cognitive activity, at the same time largely contributed to the strengthening of social ties.
Monuments of primitive art testify to the development of human consciousness, about his life at that remote time. They also tell about the beliefs of primitive man. The fantastic notions from which the oldest religious beliefs of Stone Age hunters arose include the beginnings of reverence for the forces of nature and, above all, the cult of the beast.
The origin of the rude cult of the beast and hunting witchcraft was due to the importance of hunting as the main source of existence of the ancient people of this period, the real role that belonged to the beast in their daily life. The beasts took over from the start important place in the mind of primitive man and in primitive religion. 8
Transferring to the animal world the relations characteristic of primitive tribal communities, inextricably linked with each other by marriage unions and exogamous norms, primitive He also thought of this animal world as if in the form of a second and completely equal half of his own community. From this developed totemism, i.e., the idea that all members of a given genus are descended from a particular animal, plant, or other “totem” and are connected with this type of animal by an indissoluble bond. The very word totem, which entered science, was borrowed from the language of one of the North American Indian tribes - the Algonquins, in whom it means "his kind." Animals and people, according to totemic ideas, had common ancestors. Animals, if they wanted to, could take off their skins and become human beings. Giving people their own meat, they died. But if people saved their bones and performed the necessary rituals, the animals returned to life again, thus “providing” an abundance of food, the well-being of the primitive community.
The first weak beginnings of such a primitive cult of the beast can be found, judging by the finds in Teshik-Tash and in the Alpine caves, possibly already at the end of the Mousterian time. Its development is clearly evidenced by the monuments of the cave art of the Upper Cro-Magnons, the content of which is almost exclusively images of animals: mammoths, rhinos, bulls, horses, deer, predators, such as a cave lion and a bear. In the first place, of course, are those animals, the hunting of which was the main source of food: ungulates.
To understand the meaning of these cave drawings, the conditions in which they are located are also important. In itself, the preservation of cave drawings is determined by the stable hygroscopic regime inside the caves, which are also isolated from the influence of temperature fluctuations that took place on the surface of the earth. The drawings are usually located at a considerable distance from the entrance, for example, in Nio (France) - at a distance of 800 m. The constant life of a person at such a distance from the entrance to the caves, in the depths, where eternal darkness and dampness reigned, of course, was impossible. To get into the most wonderful repositories of cave art, sometimes even now you have to make your way into the dark depths of the caves through narrow wells and crevices, often crawling, even swim across the underground rivers and lakes blocking the further path.
What thoughts and feelings guided the primitive sculptors and painters of the ancient Stone Age, their drawings show no less clearly. Here are bison with darts or harpoons stuck in them, animals covered with wounds, dying predators, whose blood is pouring from a wide-open mouth. Schematic drawings are visible on the figures of mammoths, which may depict hunting pits, which, as some researchers believe, served to catch these ice age giants.
The specific purpose of cave drawings is also evidenced by the characteristic overlap of some drawings on others, their multiplicity, showing that the images of animals were made, apparently, not forever, but only for one time, for one or another separate rite. This can be seen even more clearly on small, smooth tiles, where overlapping patterns often form a continuous grid of intersecting and completely tangled lines. Such pebbles must have been re-coated each time with red paint, on which the drawing was scratched. Thus, these drawings were made only for one specific moment, "lived" only once.
It is believed that female figurines of the Upper Cro-Magnons were also largely associated with witchcraft hunting rites. Their meaning is determined, according to these views, by the ideas of the ancient hunters who believed in a kind of "division of labor" between men who kill animals and women who, with their witchcraft, were supposed to "attract" animals under the blows of the hunters' spears. This assumption is well substantiated by ethnographic analogies.
At the same time, female figurines are, apparently, evidence of the existence of a cult of female spirits, characteristic of ancient communities with a maternal clan. This cult is well known according to the beliefs of various tribes, including not only agricultural, but also purely hunting ones, such as the Aleuts and Eskimos of the 17th-18th centuries. n. e., whose way of life, due to the harsh Arctic nature and hunting, showed the greatest similarity with the everyday life of Cro-Magnon hunters in the glacial regions of Europe and Asia. 9
The culture of these Aleutian and Eskimo tribes in its general development, of course, went far ahead in comparison with the culture of the upper Cro-Magnons, but it is more interesting that in their religious beliefs much has been preserved that helps to understand the ideas that the female Paleolithic figurines brought to life.
The development and nature of the primitive religious ideas and rituals that developed among the Cro-Magnons can also be judged from the Upper Paleolithic burials. The earliest Upper Cro-Magnon burials were found in the vicinity of Menton (Italy); they belong to the Aurignacian time. People who buried their dead relatives in Menton grottoes laid them in clothes lavishly decorated with sea shells, necklaces and bracelets made of shells, animal teeth and fish vertebrae. Flint plates and bone dagger-shaped points were found from tools with skeletons in Menton. The dead were covered in mineral red paint. So, in the Grimaldi caves in the vicinity of Menton, two skeletons were found - young men 15-17 years old and old women, laid on a cooled fire in a crouched position. On the skull of the young man, decorations from the headdress, consisting of four rows of drilled sea shells, survived. Bracelets made of the same shells were placed on the left hand of the old woman. Near the body of the young man were, in addition, flint plates. Above, but also still in the Aurignacian layer, lay two children's skeletons, in the pelvic region of which about a thousand drilled shells were found, apparently decorating the front of the clothes.
Cro-Magnon burials show that by that time it was customary to bury the dead with jewelry and tools that they used during life, with food supplies, and sometimes even with materials for making tools and weapons. From this we can conclude that at this time ideas about the soul are already emerging, as well as about the "land of the dead", where the deceased will hunt and lead the same life that he led in this world.
According to these ideas, death usually meant a simple departure of the soul from the human body to the "world of ancestors." The “Land of the Dead” was often imagined to be located in the upper or lower reaches of the river where this tribal community lived, sometimes underground, in the “underworld”, or in the sky, or on an island surrounded by water. Once there, the souls of people obtained food for themselves by hunting and fishing, built dwellings and lived a life similar to the earth.
Something similar to these beliefs, judging by the archaeological sites noted above, must have existed among Paleolithic people. From that era, such views have come down to our time. They are also at the basis of modern religions that have developed in a class society.
Noteworthy is such a characteristic feature of Cro-Magnon burials as the sprinkling of the dead in the graves with blood. According to the views described by ethnographers on the role of red paint in various rites, among many tribes of recent times, red paint - bloodstone - should have replaced blood - the source life force and the seat of the soul. Judging by their wide distribution and obvious connection with the hunting way of life, such views go back to the distant primitive past.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, we can say the following: Cro-Magnon archaeological cultures differ significantly from each other in some specific features of flint and bone products. This is one of the features in which the Cro-Magnon culture as a whole differs from the Neanderthal: Neanderthal tools from various regions have a very high degree of similarity. Perhaps such a differentiation of Cro-Magnon products means real cultural differences between individual tribes of ancient people. On the other hand, a certain style in the manufacture of tools could reflect the individual manner of some ancient master, a manifestation of his personal aesthetic preferences.
Cro-Magnon culture includes another phenomenon that has arisen only in modern man. We are talking about the art of the Stone Age, art, the works of which can be considered not only the wall paintings of the Ancient caves, but also the tools of Cro-Magnon man themselves, tools sometimes so perfect in their lines and shapes that they can hardly be reproduced by anyone living today. of people.
Thus, the tasks are solved, the purpose of the work is fulfilled.
Bibliography
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3. Ancient civilizations: from Egypt to China. M., 2007.
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7. Mongait A.L. Archeology Western Europe/ Stone Age. M., 2003.
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